The Wall Street Journal, July 25-27, 2003.

Temple Bar's Mermaid Still makes a Splash
by Paul Levy

"An influx of cosmopolitan diners with money to spend has helped Dublin's restaurant scene evolve. Chefs are creating sophisticated dishes using Ireland's fresh fish and meat, which had always been available but seldom purchased by Dublin restuarants.
The turnaround is seen at places such as The Mermaid Café, where head chef temple Garner layers calf liver with sage and polenta…"

"…the bad food days are over, he (Ben Gorman) says. "We can now get meat that is properly hung and aged, fish from the same day's catch, shellfish [if it hasn't already been exported to Spain], excellent vegetables and salads and wonderful Irish cream, butter and cheeses," he says. Proof of this were the specials he was advertising that day: local Angus sirloin steaks and 900-gram lobsters."

The Mermaid Café

For eight years now, the Mermaid has been the gastronomic beacon in Temple Bar, the neighborhood whose pubs, clubs, theaters and restaurants proclaim the area to be the swinging Dublin heartland. It's almost a shop-front eatery (like the next-door deli, which Ben Gorman, the chef, and Mark Harrell also own) and the décor is as simple as the cutlery and crockery and plain wood tables and chairs. The whole package tells you that the food and wine is paramount, not the presence of the popstars at the next table.

What the locals love about the Mermaid is its atmosphere and distinctiveness. There are always dishes on the menu that you could pick out as Mr. Gorman's in a gastronomic lineup. Irish restaurant critic John McKenna calls the style "very bookish and very learned, very punky, very rustic and utterly convincing."

Mr Gorman was taught in London by Sonia Blech, a celebrated chef of the 1980s, and has passed on to his head chef, Temple Garner, a fondness for fruit with meat and a liking for nuts in unusual places, such as sprinkled over the suprisingly fine candied butternut-squash salad that formed part of a starter plate of "The Mermaid antipasti." Other components of this amazing ad hoc assembly (each of which could be ordered on its own as a starter) included a juicy grilled quail on a pile of lentils, a chunk of gutsy duck liver paté on toast with spiced apple, a couple of eggs with soft yolks and a sexy dressing, and a blob of really fresh mozzarella and cherry-tomato salad.

Others at the table had a starter of six enormous, spanking fresh scallops cooked with olive oil and microscopically diced garlic and tomato flesh (11.95 Euro), and a watercress salad with fava beans, chopped egg and " lemon mayo" (8.95 Euro) that was a slight letdown with some boring boiled new potatoes.

Main courses were all the vertical proud towers young male chefs seem to delight in constructing. Calves liver layered with sage, polenta and roasted red onions (25.95 Euro) was beautifully cooked, as was the dish of steamed hake (26.95 Euro) with saffron aioli (garlic mayonnaise) literally supported by chorizo and a collection of mussels in their shells. A butterflied double slice of monkfish (27.95 Euro) was surrounded by prosciutto, flavoured with rosemary, resting on a plinth of a crisp potato rosti, served with the first oyster mushrooms I've ever found worth the bother of eating and a smoked tomato sauce a mite too sweet.

Three scoops of kirsh and griotte (morello cherry) frozen yogurts disappeared with the same rapidity as the two-chocolate ice cream. Messrs. Gorman and Harrell are justly proud of their wine list, which contains lots of treats from california, but from which we drank the stunning house recommendations of an aromatic Alsace Pinot Blanc and a powerful Spanish red from Navarra.